How to Drive Customer Loyalty with a Digital Retail Extension

Customer loyalty is at the core of the most successful businesses. When your customers are engaged in your brand, they keep you top of mind and refer your company to their family, friends, and extended network. And for brick-and-mortar businesses, keeping your customers engaged beyond the store is one way to get ahead of the ever-growing e-commerce competition.

As the founder and head of strategy of the marketing studio Tote + Pears, I have been helping retailers grow for the past 10 years by converting customers into brand advocates. When you have a physical location, you have an advantage. By introducing easy-to-implement digital tactics, you can transform in-store customers into raving fans. Here's how. 

Email Marketing

Your customers want to hear from you, and email marketing is a good way to stay in touch. By sending emails directly to your customers, you can keep them up to date on what's happening in your store and share promotions and updates on new products, giving them a reason to come back into the store. An email campaign ensures they don't forget about you. If you haven't already done so, consider setting up an email campaign that includes a monthly round-up of activities and announcements and then expand from there.

Drip Campaigns

Customers share their email addresses with you because they want something from you. They want to learn about your products, upcoming events, and special promotions. A drip email campaign helps you stay in constant contact with your customers effortlessly through a pre-written, automated set of emails written and scheduled in advance. 

Keep your first drip campaign simple with a welcome email series. After you send the welcome email, follow up with an automated email a day or two later inviting your customers to connect with you online or refer a friend for a discount. As you get more comfortable with drip campaigns, you can create a highly targeted, trigger-based journey to boost engagement and loyalty, promote relevant content and increase brand awareness. 

SMS Marketing

You need to grab your customers’ attention fast—and get personal—if you want to stay on their minds. Sending your customers a short text message holds their attention longer than a lengthy email, and you don’t have to worry about your message getting filtered into a customer’s spam or promotional folders. Give SMS a try to announce time-based promotions like a flash sale or send your customers a discount code to use in store. 

Social Media

Social media is a fun way to connect with your customers and make them feel like they’re part of your story. When you share stories or posts that pull back the curtain on your brand’s daily activities, your customers feel like they’re part of the family and are compelled to visit your store. If you haven’t set up a paid advertising campaign yet, consider creating a quiz that promotes a product while giving your customer value. For example, you might consider creating a skin quiz if you sell skin care products. After the person completes the quiz, they receive a digital coupon to use in store. By developing a social media strategy that combines organic content and ads, you gain higher engagement rates and build brand awareness while increasing revenue.

Content Marketing

You don't have to have a blog to have an effective content marketing campaign. The goal is to provide your customers with written or visual content that tells a story, delivers value and is engaging. You can do this through podcasting, writing ebooks, creating infographics, or making videos. The grocery delivery service Shipt, a Tote + Pears client, uses video as part of its content marketing to spread the word about its products while showcasing the company's culture, which is centered around being a place of belonging for its people and the broader community. 

Shipt films videos showing their staff making their favorite recipes, with each video having meaning and personality. The information is the recipe, the interaction between the staff and their friends and family is the entertainment, and it all ties into the company's brand, connecting over food. Customers look forward to watching the videos, which keeps them connected with Shipt. 

When you have a physical location, you have an advantage. By introducing easy-to-implement digital tactics, you can transform in-store customers into raving fans.

Influencer Marketing

To get closer to your customer, consider influencer marketing. Influencers have droves of devoted followers eager to learn more about new brands. If you're new to influencer marketing, there are certain factors to consider. You want to choose an influencer whose brand aligns with yours. You also want to look at all the numbers, not just how many followers they have. Influencers can have hundreds of thousands of followers but have low engagement rates, which doesn't do your business any good. To encourage in-store sales, work with local influencers who have high engagement rates and followers who are your ideal customer. You can determine their engagement rates by reviewing their profile and posts to see if and how people interact with their content, or by using an influencer engagement calculator tool. 

Bringing the in-store experience into your customers' daily lives is the first step toward retaining customer loyalty. The key to success when developing a digital retail extension plan is consistency. Brands find the most success when they choose tactics that work well with their brand's identity and, most importantly, can commit to executing. You must show up consistently for your customers if you want to earn their loyalty. When your customers feel part of your brand's family, they can be more likely to return to your store repeatedly, ready to spend their money and boost your revenue.